Category: startup

A couple weeks ago we decided to get an artificial Christmas tree. I love real trees, but years of evidence have proven I’m allergic. We think the dog is too. And the cleanup is a nightmare. So we went to Target looking for one. I didn’t want to go to Target, but my wife andRead More

We hired a professional photographer this Christmas and he almost lost our business. My wife is one of four kids. One of those kids has four kids. We have a kid. Another sister has two kids. There’s a lot of us. And this Christmas we finally had most of us together. So my wife tookRead More

My 3 year old daughter is in school. Most of her classmates are older than her. She keeps up great. But she reported to us recently, that many kids have called her small. And it makes her feel bad. It’s easy to just chalk this up to kids being naive. “Hey kid, comparing your ageRead More

Photo by Steven Lelham There’s an endless list of books about how the greatest become the greatest — deliberate practice. They don’t just show up time after time. They also set short measurable goals and keep stretching them. Time your runs. Swim a bit faster. Get yourself over that pull up bar just one more time. That’s greatRead More

I was a broke college student. I didn’t spend much besides getting the essentials, but money made during the summer, even working as much overtime as my boss would allow, evaporated quickly. The quintessential example of how broke I was — I rolled up to a gas station on my way to an interview for an internship,Read More

The glowing haze won’t cover things up forever It’s been a tough year for the tech startup capital of the world. One marred by scandals, flame-outs, and pissy, defensive postures by its royal court. I get the sense that a common thought is “what happened?!”. Why all the scrutiny, why now? Because you’re not a punkRead More

I had a vague inkling of an idea for a company in 2005. A friend of mine mentioned this new program called Y Combinator that was investing in teams willing to move to Silicon Valley and build out their ideas. We were older (by a bunch) than the college/new grads they seemed to be targeting.Read More

Don’t treat employees the way you want to be treated. Here’s why. “Treat others the way you’d like to be treated.” This is The Golden Rule we all learned growing up. As a manager or CEO in a company, you’d think it would make sense to follow it too. Managers should treat their employees the wayRead More

Toy Story does this so well. Go watch Pixar’s work. Every minute there’s a value change. They’re happy, now their sad. They’re safe, now they’re not. Now they are. Now they aren’t again. My kid was glued to her seat at My Little Pony because their writers also know this basic tenet of interesting writingRead More

Can I interest you in a necklace with a lesson for eternity? Venture capital taught Etsy that making money wasn’t a skill it needed to learn early on. Go on, it said, spend the millions. And when you’ve spent those, come back and get some more. So Etsy did. They came back for a BRead More